Despite being frustratingly inconsistent though, Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness is still a step in the right direction.

Yet even Campbell can’t save Desire Lines from coming off as creatively stagnant, just as pretty as ever but overwhelmingly pedestrian.

There’s a lot of guests on this album and it brings a heterogeneous quality to Ordinary Man, but for the most part this aspect turns detrimental to the overall vision. Ozzy should have banded together a small fixture of musicians for the album and ran with a consistent tone that would see his mantra through to the end.

The Golden Casket reveals itself to not only be the group’s most colorful release in quite some time, but also one of their most consistent.

While this album similarly holds nothing back, it’s not an artifice either. It’s Demi Lovato ditching their indoctrinated pop formula in favor of the music they truly want to be making, all while going for the jugular in terms of scale. Holy Fvck is massive and over-the-top in just about every way, yet anchored by very real pain that lends substance to each grandiose moment.

There’s a worrying air of desperation running through the band’s lyrical choices that thankfully doesn’t spill over into the music, but it is nonetheless a frequent distraction on an otherwise fine album from a heavy metal juggernaut that might just be kicking back into gear.

What we end up with here is Angelo De Augustine’s most brazen step forward to date. Tomb sees him not buried, but bursting forth with flourishing atmospheres.

In the end, Interplay feels like something of an incoherent mess if looked at with a microscope, but zoom a bit further out and it maintains enough of a “vibe” to feel at least somewhat cohesive, while also being a fun listen which should be even more enjoyable as the sun comes out and the temperature climbs.

All told, this is an album which will almost certainly be enjoyable if you like kinda hazy, kinda ethereal, kinda catchy indie/alt thingamajigs, but it’s also an album desperately lacking the hint of an edge which would give the total product further potency. Even so, it’s a solid comeback from another crew of aging shoegazers, just don’t set your expectations too high.

Odd Blood delivers a series of earworms that are undeniably catchy but leave a legitimate question in their wake: why should we care? Yeasayer ultimately fails to answer this question, and Odd Blood sort of just runs its course unimpressively.

Sometimes captivating, always soothingly pleasant, The Land, The Water, The Sky is an accessible effort which should appeal to a wide audience.

There is familiarity here, but nothing feels routine. This is an album as cohesive and thunderous as it would have been if it had come out in 2014.

Never Let Me Go is a fantastic album, and it could even be argued that it’s the most consistent and engaging album of their career – certainly, it’s their most ambitious to date.

Mercurial Bay is bland and overpolished and probably insecure and definitely destined to make mincemeat of fickle hearts all over the web. It is good and shiny like an overviewed but freshly refiltered Instagram photo of a Hollywood sunset.

I Lay Down My Life For You isn’t brilliant for the ways in which it’s bonkers, but brilliant for the ways in which it’s not. This is no hyperactive pile-up of disjointed ideas, no scrapbook of jank, but (rather) a weighty and well-realized WOOF of a statement, one that retains the eclecticism, sense of humor and sample/prod-wizardry that put Peggy on the map, but honing that shit to a point.

Musically, we get a wider array of genres, reminiscing their eclectic classic Feast Of Wire, released in 2003. Nevertheless, Edge Of The Sun flows smoothly from start to finish.

Ring is an album that puts Cameron Mesirow on par with any of the emerging group of experimental female vocalists and if we didn't notice it before, there's a Glasser-shaped hole somewhere between Bat For Lashes' conceptual pop schizophrenia and Fever Ray's icy soundscapes and Cameron Mesirow is the missing puzzle piece. Debut albums rarely come more accomplished.

There’s something absurdly listenable about the whole package, and I suspect that the listening experience will only get better as the weeks go by and the thermostat cranks up to increasingly unbearable temperatures. This is, after all, one of those records built for those moments spent wallowing in the heat haze. Sounds like a bloody good time.

Endless Rooms has the feel of a transition album, with the group throwing some new ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. There’s several new sounds and influences present on Endless Rooms which present intriguing and viable routes for RBCF to pursue on their eventual fourth record. The future is uncertain, but hope springs eternal.

Despite a few individual disappointments, Alive 2007 is as exciting a collection of music as any released this year.

The good thing is that all songs have a character of their own and hence an appreciable replay value.

Bloom has continued making Beach House a Thing in indie music, a band that has a feasible future, that won't be just forgotten and left by the wayside. It's nothing to get excited about.

They return with something more uniquely insidious than anything heard from the label so far, something which attacks and intoxicates in equal measure, completely assured of its success and all the more awe-inspiring for it.

Maybe it doesn't have the relevance as the original album, and doesn't quite live up to the legacy, but it is intelligently composed and often moving.

Tremors finds time to be adventurous with its feet firmly planted on the ground; it moves maturely.

Bish Bosch is as much about challenging the people that absorbed and accepted Tilt and The Drift as it is challenging the rest of the world--and while that makes it consistent with all his work since Nite Flights, each subsequent album giving his fan base another hurdle to overcome, it also gives it a thrill that's unique to both his discography and the majority of the music you could compare it to. If, indeed, there is any.

By making precise tweaks and adjustments to their sound by approaching Koloss with a new attitude, all the while holding fast to their core strengths, Meshuggah have given us the first truly engaging metal album of 2012.

Filled to the brim with consistently excellent songs, Once More 'Round The Sun serves as a blueprint of how to go commercial without sacrificing one's artistic identity.